Guidelines for Writing an Effective Thesis Proposal

Guidelines for Writing an Effective Thesis Proposal is primarily meant for graduate students, but can also apply
to undergraduate researchers whose report is typically more focused.
A thesis proposal is an essential element in the development of a masters or doctoral thesis. Depending on the
department or group, a proposal may be mandatory or optional (it is almost always mandatory at the doctoral
level, but at times optional at the masters).
The proposal serves many objectives including the following:
Effectively communicates the intentions of your research to your technical advisors and peers, so that
they in turn may provide critical feedback.
Convinces your technical advisors that your plan has sufficient value and is realistic.
Helps focus and structure your work, so that you have a clear idea of the thesis or hypothesis you intend
to investigate.
Ensures that you have the big picture of the work you are doing through a critical assessment of the
motivations and applications of your problem and by investing in a survey of the research area.
Allows you and your advisor to negotiate a good plan for your work so that you know how to begin and
may also compare to your progress for useful self-evaluation.
Answers the following questions:
o If your thesis works out, how will applied science be better off or have changed?
o What societal impact will this research have (as engineers our work always has intrinsic societal
impact, but we need to be explicit regarding how our work will positively affect the community
at large)?
There are many styles to a thesis proposal (and in doing research), but I suggest the following structure to my
students. If you have another preference, please go ahead (be creative), but just make sure that all the following
elements exist in your document. In my opinion, a good proposal can be easily reworked into the first chapter of
your final thesis. Please note that a thesis proposal takes much planning and time (the research plans and literary
presentation are both very important).
Introduction
Problem

Formulation What is the specific problem that you are trying to solve (be exact)? Provide a
mathematical description wherever possible and illustrate with figure(s) to help elucidate what you are
doing. The problem can be formulated as a question. One of the biggest problems I have observed with
formulation of the thesis problem involves scope. Often the problem statement is too broad (usually as a
result of not being specific enough in the selected framework to describe the problem i.e., the
problem has been sufficiently narrowed down), or involves too many/ too few things to be solved in the
given time frame of the thesis.
Motivation
Why are you investigating this problem? Why is at an important issue? You need to discuss the
reasons you are going to spend years of your life solving this problem. You can motivate the problem
by:
o Discussing trends in research, current events and industry, among other areas. The more specific
the examples and motivation you have, the better.
o Describing the technical deficiencies of existing solutions (or lack of existing solutions) to
address the problem. This should involve general conclusions that you have formed about the
fundamental problems with existing work. Existing work is not described here, but the
conclusions should be stated.
Applications Describe what the existing applications are that would benefit from finding a solution to
the problem you have specified. You will find many applications in your literature survey. What gives
this section (and your proposal) even more merit is if you discuss novel applications that others
have not considered. Can you see any other extended uses of the work? As a student (and in most
cases someone who is new to the area), you have an advantage that you can see things from a new
perspective. In addition, keep in mind a target application for your work. Families of solutions exist to
problems. Selection of the right solution must be suited to a specific application.

Survey (a.k.a Literature Review) of Previous Work

Classification of Existing Techniques The purpose of a survey is to convey to the reader (in a
reasonably succinct form) what has been done in the previous literature. A good way to provide the
big picture is to provide a classification of existing methods/analysis (remember biology genus,
species?). A classification is by no means unique; there are different taxonomies that can be used.
However, your job is to find the best one that suits your thesis formulation. For example, if you are
researching new transform domains in which to hide steganographic data, then your taxonomy can be
effective by dividing existing techniques according to the transforms they use. Please note that newer
areas (especially at the ad hoc stage) are sometimes harder to find solid taxonomies for. However, it can
be done through
creativity and insight.
A classification map, which should be included in this section, is an overall diagram starting with a node
representing all techniques and then splitting the node into category nodes that are further split, and so
on. The leafs of the tree can represent fundamental classes of techniques/analyses (that dont make sense
to break down any more) or the techniques/analyses themselves (in areas that are relatively new without
many existing contributions). The tree can get quite complex depending on the taxonomy selected and at
times some techniques may seem to fit in multiple categories. However, modifying your classification
can help simplify things. A description of the map is necessary to describe how the techniques are
divided and to provide insight into why this is a good methodology.
Literature Review The actual description of each approach should reflect any differences in the
problem solved (compared to that formulated in the thesis), any assumptions made, the novelty of the
work (i.e., the contributions of the method/analysis to the body of research), the advantages and
limitations as well as any fundamental trade-offs observed. If you are dealing with a very large body of
existing work, be selective in what you survey. Also, in your description, you can group methods that
build on top of each other to simplify this section.
Trends and Areas of Future Development A literature review should be greater than the sum of its
parts. One way in which to achieve this quality is to identify general trends and insights in the work you
have read. Based on how things are evolving, do you see a natural evolutionary step? Research almost
always builds on itself. Does all existing work have similar characteristics that are limiting in some
way? Your answers to these questions should enable you to identify both trends and necessary areas
for future development. This also provides the motivation discussed in the previous section.
Tip Its important to be on top of the research in your area, so it is recommended that you do as
thorough a review as possible. Also, keep in mind what other researchers say about different work to
identify how different contributions are interpreted and have impact to a general area.

Proposed Solution
Chacteristics

of a Good Solution Make a list of what an effective solution looks like and prioritize
the characteristics if you are targeting a given application. Define what the characteristics mean to your
problem formulation and discuss the necessary fundamental compromises and why you prioritized as
you did.
Tool-Sets As engineers we often borrow existing tools to solve a problem or we develop novel tools to
do the job. Application-oriented work often borrows tools whereas pure research can, to some degree,
invent them. Describe what types of tool-sets that you expect to use in your work and why you believe
they are a good fit. The tools may include analysis techniques, previously proposed algorithms.
Hypotheses Discuss why you think the proposed tool-sets will solve the problem and improve upon
any previous work. You should defend your hypotheses with both evidence based on previous work
(you can reference instances, which may not be related to your exact problem, where the tool-set has
worked well), and intuition (this is where it helps to predict and infer new directions from existing work.
This part will not be simple to do. If this part was easy, then your scope may be too specific. After all, as
Albert Einstein said, If we knew what we were doing, we wouldnt call it research. Proving your
hypothesis is the objective of your thesis.
The Solution Present your actual methodology to address the problem. Start with a global perspective
with block diagrams and then break each component of the block diagram into parts that you

discuss more specifically. If there are elements that are as of yet undecided, state what they are. These
elements will comprise the tasks in your research milestones.
Preliminary Results Here is where the results of naive or partial implementations of your ideas go.
You have suggested a particular solution for a number of reasons. These reasons should ideally not just
be based on what previous work has said. It is also good to do your own analysis (even if in the
beginning you have to assume everything is Gaussian!) or simulations (even if you must assume the
most ideal conditions) to help justify your approach to solving the problem.

Research Milestones
Tasks Determine the

effective problems you intend to pursue in your thesis. What will you design?
What will you analyze? What will you experiment with? What will you simulate? You must list these in
chronological order and show the relationship between the different stages. These must be specific. Just
saying I intend to analyze the algorithm is insufficient for a proposal. You should discuss how exactly
you will approach the analysis process and discuss the tool-sets you intend to try.
Milestones List and elaborate in chronological order how you will work on the various tasks you have
set out to do. These may be overlapping in time. What is important here is that you give yourself enough
time to do everything including writing up the thesis which will take months (and of course make sure it
is within the timeline of your degree requirements). Take into account if you will be TAing, working, or
taking courses. Any of these tasks can reduce your research time by at least a factor of two. For those
who must build chips, you must take into account fabrication times, etc.

Length

If your thesis proposal is an official component of your degree requirements, then the length may be set.
Different schools have different guidelines, so check the length at your graduate office.
Other Tips
Research,

especially for those who come directly out of an undergraduate program, can seem
deceptively easy or low-volume. It truly is the result of persistence, hard work and accountability. Your
consistent efforts will shine through in a good proposal.
If you are stuck, try going outside your area for inspiration. There may be potential in borrowing
tools/solutions from other areas.
Get to know your library resources (especially the electronic ones). scholar.google.com, INSPEC and
IEEE/IEE Databases are excellent must-use resources.
Write your proposal well. Make sure it is organized, easy to read, has proper grammar and conveys what
you intend to say in the simplest possible way. Do not use complicated words. Think before you write
any paragraph to make sure there isnt an easier more straightforward way to convey the
information. Your ideas will not be accepted as easily and you will not be necessarily given the credit
you deserve if you frustrate the reader. One way to do this is to make it possible to read the first sentence
of every paragraph and understand the document. Each paragraph may start general and go specific.
Writing is a personal thing, so it is important to practice writing, pay attention to others writing in order
to develop a style that is comfortable for you.
Have a peer read over your thesis before you give it to your advisor. Their feedback will be invaluable
for the presentation of the work and to help you identify if any part of the document needs more
justification.
Feedback from advisor during the formulation of a thesis is often invaluable. However, the quality of the
feedback you get is a function of the quality of the work you present to them. Instead of saying I have
no idea what to do (which, believe me, will anger even the most kind advisor), try working through the
problem and come up with a number of potential solutions that you can discuss with your advisor. Also,
if your advisor is busy, be persistent, and keep up by arranging periodic contact hours if you dont
have regular meetings.